Surgical procedures such as medical examinations and operations performed on patients/subjects/persons often require assistive illumination or lighting to improve visualization by surgeons/clinicians/doctors/users, thereby mitigating risk of complications or even accidents during the surgical procedure.
Currently, operating theatres are equipped with different types of devices for providing assistive illumination while conducting the surgical operations. One example is an overhead surgical light apparatus. However, the overhead surgical light apparatus may not be able to provide illumination or lighting at the desired intensity and location because the illumination may be blocked by another object, or it may be difficult to position the illuminating elements or luminaries to direct illumination into body cavities that are too deep. Particularly for surgical procedures on patients or subjects with deep and narrow body cavities, the surgical access region is narrow and the need for improved illumination in the body cavities is significant. If the body cavity is inclined at an angle relative to the horizontal, i.e. an oblique body cavity, light from the overhead surgical light apparatus would not be able to penetrate into the deeper regions of the oblique body cavity. Surgeons using the overhead surgical light apparatus tend to struggle to gain proper visualization of the surgical space and the body cavity therein.
There are various devices that are more portable and can be deployed to improve or enhance illumination in body cavities. One common device is a head-mounted lighting device, also known as surgeon headlights or headlamps. The headlamp is mounted on the surgeon's head as a separate device, or may be mounted on another device on the surgeon's head. However, there is a tendency for the headlamp to move when the surgeon moves his head. In this way, if the surgeon looks up to speak to another surgical team member or for any other reason, the correct or desired location to be visualized may not always be adequately illuminated for the other surgical team members. Further, headlamps tend to have very focused and narrow illumination which enables the surgeon to see one area of the patient's body cavity quite clearly. But when the surgeon looks away—moving his eyes but not his head—from said area to focus on surrounding body tissues, the field of illumination does not change, causing the surgeon to have difficulty in adjusting his eyes to the body cavity's environment. This may eventually cause the surgeon to find it challenging to identify the important anatomical structures. Headlamps may also require heavy, cumbersome batteries. The design and usage methods of headlamps are often not ergonomic leading to their being cumbersome in use. Headlamps may require the surgeon's head to be angled awkwardly in order to better aim the light at a part of the surgical site. Prolonged use of headlamps can cause discomfort or strain in the neck and shoulder regions.
Some lighting devices are attachable to surgical instruments to provide assistive lighting at the surgical sites being operated with the surgical instruments. One example of surgical instruments are retractors for separating the edges of a surgical incision or wound, e.g. widening a body cavity. These attachable lighting devices tend not to be able to illuminate effectively the areas surgeons need to visualize because the surgical instruments may not be placed or directed where the light is required. For example, retractors are used to retract tissues to allow surgeons to have a wider operating space, which means that the retractors are positioned at the edge of the operating space, and thus can only illuminate the region near the edge of the operating space. These lighting devices attachable to retractors cannot provide correctly focused and adequate lighting in the body cavity; as the lighted devices do not always direct the light where it is needed.
An example of a lighting device or illumination device that is attachable to surgical instruments is disclosed in United States patent publication US 2008/0266840. Particularly, US 2008/0266840 discloses a surgical illumination device (10) that can be attached to a retractor (70). Some of the aforementioned problems regarding attachable lighting devices are relevant here as well. For example, the direction of lighting from the surgical illumination device (10) is restricted to the direction whereat the retractor (70) is pointing. Once the retractor (70) is inserted into a body cavity, the direction of illumination tends to be downwards at the peripheral surface of the body cavity. This would only allow the lower region of the body cavity to be illuminated, thus failing to uniformly illuminate the entire body cavity.
Therefore, in order to address or alleviate at least one of the aforementioned problems and/or disadvantages, there is a need to provide an illumination device for illuminating a body cavity, in which there is at least one or some improved features over the prior art.